A seven-panel mural depicting 130 women from British history and culture has been commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery as part of a three-year project to enhance female representation in its collection.
Work in Progress, by Jann Haworth and Liberty Blake, was inspired by the album cover for the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which Haworth co-created in 1967. It draws together many stencilled depictions of cultural figures – some never before represented at the gallery – into a single image.
Work in Progress will result in the NPG doubling the number of women on the walls of its post-1900 galleries to 48% when it reopens in June after major refurbishment. When the doors open, more than 200 portraits of women made after 1900 and more than 100 portraits by women made after 1900 will be displayed, the NPG said.
The women depicted range from the 1st century onwards and encapsulate a wide spread of professions and backgrounds, from Boudicca to Dame Mary Beard.
The mural also depicts 26 important figures who until now have not been represented in the NPG’s collection, from the nurse Dame Elizabeth Anionwu and the vaccinologist Dame Sarah Gilbert, to the comedian and disability rights activist Barbara Lisicki and the 19th-century freedom seeker and abolitionist Ellen Craft.
The work was created in collaboration with colleges and community groups across the UK, through a series of workshops held by Haworth and Blake. Participants produced stencilled portraits with acrylic paints and paper, based on existing depictions of their chosen women. Fourteen professional artists were also invited to create full-length portraits, which appear in the front row.
“For the viewer, the mural presents an opportunity to see lifesized figures from throughout history, impossibly crowded together,” said Blake. “The idea that Elizabeth I might stand shoulder to shoulder with Lady Caroline Norton in a crowd is amusing, invokes curiosity, and helps people learn more about the contributions of some of the women who have played a part in shaping the world that we live in.”
Haworth said she kept asking herself: “How can you celebrate the accomplishments made by women when you know that the more you look, the more stories you discover, and that you will have to answer this question – why aren’t they included?”
This is why, among the inspirational women represented, “a blank silhouette is left for the viewer to add their own choice to the mural”, she added.
Flavia Frigeri, Chanel curator at the NPG, said: “Trailblazing women of the past are role models for the future.”
Work in Progress forms part of Reframing Narratives: Women in Portraiture, a three-year partnership project with the Chanel Culture Fund, which aims to increase representation of women within the NPG’s collection.
Last year, the gallery announced it had acquired five self-portraits by female artists including Chila Burman, Susan Hiller, Rose Finn-Kelcey, Celia Paul and Everlyn Nicodemus, whose work Självporträtt, Åkersberga was the first painted self-portrait by a Black female artist to enter the gallery’s collection.
